Currently Playing (August 2015 Edition)

This is a discussion on Currently Playing (August 2015 Edition) within the Features and Editorials forum, part of the Trophy Guides, Reviews & Articles; TerminalPhoenix
What I'm Currently Playing: Batman: Arkham Knight, Rocket League
Holy DLCs Batman! No really, what up with them DLCs?
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Currently Playing (August 2015 Edition)

TerminalPhoenixWhat I'm Currently Playing:Batman: Arkham Knight, Rocket LeagueHoly DLCs Batman! No really, what up with them DLCs?

Alas, just like we all have to do our stupid laundry, we all must put up with an exorbitant number of "exclusive" DLCs just to satisfy our OCDs. And let me tell you something, mean gene, my OCD needs some satisfaction.

In all seriousness though, Batman: Arkham Knight is one fine game that does justice to the nerds out there with an itch that only Batman can scratch. Many games should envy and aspire to the level of detail and execution Batman AK delivers. From characters models, to voice work, to functionality, this is a solid AAA game, plain and simple. The Joker, as always, is the best part of a Batman narrative, and even though the Joker is not the main villain in this installment, he still finds a way to steal the show. The story lacks a bit of punch at times, but heck, you won't experience a better Batman elsewhere so begsies can't be choosies.

P.S. The best Batman Arkham Knight trailer below. You're welcome:

Boy was Rocket League a big surprise for me. You see, I don't do sports games. Period. I love footie but playing indoor footie with RCs in an arcade environment feels gimmicky. On paper, Rocket League has so much going against it right off the bat. Yet somehow, somehow, it plays wonderfully and it is a delight with every press of a button. Every time I enter the arena, I am filled with joy and excitement, and that is the soul of gaming.

Batman: Arkham Knight was released on PlayStation 4 on June 23th, 2015 in North America, and has a lot of bat-filled goodness. No seriously, it's very yummy. #nomnomRocket League was released on PlayStation 4 on July 7th, 2015 and it’s a game with leagues and rockets. No seriously. Also, kabooms, balls and lots of "weee"s.

What I'm Looking Forward to this Month:Tales from the Borderlands: Episode 4Silly is as silly does, and I am awaiting the opportunity to be silly once more. Ever since Episode 1, I have been patient with this series and have stockpiled episodes without playing. Here's to an August filled with debauchery and flat out, in your face, obscene fun.

Takes from the Borderlands: Episode 4 releases on PlayStation 4 on August 18th and as an unlicensed doctor, I prescribe a double dose of it to all.

Yoo_Hoo_SniperWhat I'm currently playing: Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist, DestinyOh yeah, it's time to D-D-D-D-U-E-L with Yu-Gi-Oh the Legacy of the Duelist! It has been around twelve years since I last played or even paid any attention to anything Yu-Gi-Oh related. This game allows you to replay all the historic battles through the numerous seasons with your own custom deck or by using the deck the characters had in the television show. That's over 9,000 cards and 90 different characters to battle through!!! For $19.99 you definitely get your money worth with the amount of time it would take you to 100% this game, not to mention the enjoyment of the difficult duels you get caught up in.

I must say though, there are so many cards that are unknown and new to me that I am not familiar with that I've been studying some streams and watching how the duelist setup their decks in addition to how they play their cards, and I have been learning a lot from these duelers such as LilJayR4-. This is not a game for beginners or RAGE QUITTERS, because once you hit the ranked online battles prepare yourself for a lot of frustration - especially losing in just a couple turns from these masters.

Did I mention the multiplayer trophies can be boosted for you trophy hunters? Fantastic for those scared to play this game because they may never win, but you could totally team up and battle a friend in both ranked, granted you find their name as well as a private match.

If you're looking for some extra Yu-Gi-Oh content don't worry since the PSN Store has got the hook up for you, that is if you're willing to pay $4.99 per DLC which includes new playable characters and cards. What those are I wouldn't know since I have yet to purchase them myself. but it's most likely worth it just for one or two of those rare cards.

I wouldn't be a true duelist if I weren't mixing it up with a 1st person shooter. Destiny has a good mixture of dueling itself, but when the heck are they going to make it for 6 members of a fire-team to take on strikes and patrol missions? If you don't have a team of 3 people this game can be extremely disappointing because you begin to feel like a third wheel every time you play, including raids where it is already 6 people ( or it could just be me). This has yet to stop me from playing such an addictive game just to find the best loot and knock out a couple quick hours of the day without noticing.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist hit stores on July 30th, and features a lot of animay characters playing a children's card game (but not on motorcycles).Destiny came out a year ago on September 9th and it's still a lot of fun to play with friends.

What I'm currently writing a guide for: Trine: Enchanted EditionEditor's note: Yoo_Hoo suggested (and I approved) for him to do a little write-up regarding a guide he was currently working on in addition to a game he was looking forward to this month.

Here we are in the third week of August and DaveyHasselHoff updated the second annual guide writing competition, making it the first time since January that I was overtaken in the leaderboard poll. This marks the second year in a row a new guide writer has taken first place: last year it was Faust, and this year it’s Vettes !

Because of all this heat from these guide writers (including Faust who isn’t in the top three at the moment), I am going to push my sleep schedule to pump out as many quality guides as I can for you all, and more importantly, to show these guys that the elite guide writers don’t make it easy on anyone. With your help I can add any information to my guides that I have left out whether it is tips or new strategies because “my way” is not the best everytime for everyone of course.

Right now I am working on the Trine Enchanted Edition Trophy Guide which is supported on PlayStation 4. The time to platinum takes about 8-12 hours and even shorter for those experienced. The guide has plenty of story-related trophies which makes it harder to write the guide for since I love to write a detailed guide while outlining all the information, however, I am terrible with descriptions that need no explanation so all these trophy descriptions will be bare.

Do you guys wish there was a guide setup that isn’t already here on PS3trophies.com? If so please let us hear about it and maybe it can be worked on by the next time the article is released.

Trine: Enchanted Edition was released on July 24th 2014.

What I'm looking forward to: Until DawnThis game of horror has caught my interest even after the fact of hearing how short it was in addition to not being able to skip cut-scenes. This is more of a rental now but I'm still excited to get through the campaign and platinum the game hoping it will be a true horror story.

Until Dawn will hit the PlayStation 4 on August 25th, and promises to pack a mean scare.

NagflarWhat I've played in the past months:Destiny, Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, Mortal Kombat X, BloodborneWhen I first read about Destiny, I was hyped. I've never really been a huge fan of Halo and, for that same reason, I was never one of the millions of Bungie zealots out there. However, there was something about their last game (Halo Reach) that I simply loved, and seeing how their new game would be pretty much an MMO and promised content for who knows how many years, the hype was real, and playing the beta I was able to confirm my interest, for it was pretty much what I was expecting.

Now, all of you probably know how much of a cheap bastard I am most of the time, so it was obvious I wouldn't acquire the game at release (though one of the reasons behind that decision was me wanting it for the PS4 - mostly to have a reason to own one eventually), so I mainly stuck to reading other people's opinions about the game, which were extremely mixed. At some point, while reading ant1's rants about it on his trophy checklist, I started to lose interest - then I had Faust step-in for Terminal for a monthly feature and he completely changed my mind. Having bought a PS4 around that same time, I decided it was time to grab the game (and funnily enough it also got a price cut here during those days) and boy was Fausto right - the game is a freaking blast.

After quickly making my way through the first story missions with some help from a friend, I started getting into the stupidly fun content that are Strikes and even the Crucible. I spent many more hours than I thought I would just mindlessly shooting people in the face (and getting shotgun'd to oblivion) and doing Strikes all over the place. When I could finally get a team to do the Vault of Glass Raid (another shut-out to Fausto here, plus ooga and ctulhu) I found myself enjoying the game even more. The raid was so much fun I couldn't believe it, and after we did it on Hard I even got myself an Exotic weapon, just making me love it more.

Now, I don't have any of the two available expansions, but with The Taken King being released in September, I'll be buying that Legendary Edition or whatever and expanding my horizons (all of this after buying more Plus, too), but the vanilla game alone was enough to justify the game's purchase, for even if I haven't played much recently, I still spent most of that play-time on this game alone.

Another game I got to try recently was Mortal Kombat X. I've never been much of a fighting game fan, and if anything I enjoy Street Fighter the most, but the MK franchise has always been one I've known and played casually, so I took the opportunity to rent the newest installment and enjoy it for a while with a friend (who eventually bought it and lent it to me).

I'm by no means an expert in MK, but it feels like X has made a huge improvement, moving into a more complex and combo-based style, and making the mind games even more notorious than ever before. Added to that, the look of the game and all the new fatalities and brutalities make it stand out even more, not to mention some of the new characters are stupidly fun to play as (Cassie's Selfie Fatality is definitely one of the funniest things ever, too). Its DLC also includes some very nice characters like Tremor and Predator, actually justifying their prices due to how fun they are to play as, and making the inevitable GOTY edition a must-buy for casual fans or people on the fence about buying it.

Now, thanks to Plus, I also got around to finally playing Ground Zeroes. As many people said before, it's a glorified demo with a ridiculous $40 price-tag at release, but it's the perfect set-up for The Phantom Pain, both in terms of story and in terms of the new engine. It introduces you to all of the game's mechanics (both old and new) and lets you familiarize yourself with them, letting you know along the way that Kojima's attention to detail hasn't dwindle at all, not to mention that he Fox Engine is extremely well made.

Its biggest shortcoming is, without a doubt, its length. The game itself includes a handful of missions, though only the Ground Zeroes one is important to the overall story (and it's the one that connects Peace Walker to The Phantom Pain), and it an be completed in 15 minutes if you're quick about it (if not less). That said, the trophies do offer a lot of replayability, for you find yourself replaying both that mission and all the Side OPs in order to achieve certain tasks and ranks. It's pretty much a mini version of what Peace Walker offered, and in that sense, it allows you to replay everything over and over to improve yourself and get new equipment, but there's really not enough unique stuff involved to guarantee a purchase, making its inclusion to Plus a very nice addition.

I also finally picked up my copy of Bloodborne (which I've hardly played because of Destiny), and my first impressions are pretty much the same as from any other Souls game out there: it looks kind of pretty, there's lots of blood and you get to be butchered a lot, even more so if you're reckless (which I did for about an hour, funnily enough).

I'd really like to say more about my experience with it, but I didn't really do much nor get far (proved by me having acquired only one trophy). At most, I explored the first city and got to beat up some boss and get pummeled by another, but I've yet to get a taste of what upgrading gear is like, not to mention the overall game mechanics. If anything, I'm just trying to clear my backlog a bit so I can delve deeper into it and finally see if it's truly a game worth owning a monolith for.

Mortal Kombat X was released for the PlayStation 4 on April 14th, and features as much bloodshed as you'd expect it to.Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes was released for the PlayStation 3 and 4 on March 18th, 2014, and hit the Plus line-up for the PS4 on June.Bloodborne hit stores on March 24th, and its as gruesome as its spiritual predecessors.

What I'm looking forward to: Steins;GateI never played a Visual Novel until a year ago, but I've taken an interest in the genre lately. Having played but a handful, I've heard lots of things regarding Steins;Gate and its alleged amazingness, so with it being localized I think I'll bite the bullet and give it a go once its featured on a flash sale or something.

Steins;Gate will have its digital release on PlayStation 3 and Vita on August 25th, with a physical release following in September and a PS4 version at some point in time.

Hi everyone, always cool to see what others have been playing and what they're looking forward to. I'll probably be picking up Arkham Knight, Bloodborne, and both versions of MGSV whenever I decide to get a PS4. Stein's Gate got localized!? Not sure how I missed that, but that's awesome and I'll be getting a physical copy for sure. One of my favorite anime of all time mainly because of the story and characters. Anyway, I've been playing Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward most of August and I really enjoyed the twists the story took and new classes that are available. Trying to get before my subscription for the month is up too, so hopefully I can. I'll definitely play some more sometime next year. Also have been playing J-stars Victory Vs.+ which is a pretty fun 2vs2 fighting arena game with many anime characters. Pier Solar and the Great Architects which reminds me of a lot of classic RPGs. I haven't got very far yet, but really loving the soundtrack in the game. Finally, I picked up Injustice: Gods Among Us and the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster. So glad Lobo and Nightwing are included in the Injustice game, I'll be working towards for a while because of all the different modes and online content there is. Probably will enjoy FFX/X-2 because not only did they update some things (character models/cutscenes/music), this version also includes the extra content that was never released in the US before.

I'm looking forward to Tales of Zestiria which comes out in a few months as it's from one of my favorite series overall. I'm not sure if I'll like it as much as Tales of Xillia 2 but I think it will be fun regardless. Also thinking about picking up Lost Dimension in the near future since it seems to have a unique mechanic that's interesting.

I've been pretty busy and haven't been (feeling like) gaming at all lately.. Just like Majarubi, I also look forward to Tales of Zestiria as it is definitely one of my favourite franchises atm. I preordered the CE for the PS4.